Author: NY TIMES

Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, on Thursday abruptly ended a coalition agreement between his Scottish National Party and the Scottish Green Party, creating a new set of challenges for an embattled leader whose party has been engulfed in a funding scandal since last year.A decision by the Scottish government to soften climate change targets, and a disagreement within the coalition over trans rights policies, had increased tension between the two parties, which have governed together since August 2021.But Mr. Yousaf’s decision to scrap the coalition appeared to take Lorna Slater, a co-leader of the Greens, by surprise on Thursday morning.…

The U.S. economy remained resilient early this year, with a strong job market fueling robust consumer spending. The trouble is that inflation was resilient, too.Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, increased at a 1.6 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That was down sharply from the 3.4 percent growth rate at the end of 2023 and fell well short of forecasters’ expectations.Economists were largely unconcerned by the slowdown, which stemmed mostly from big shifts in business inventories and international trade, components that often swing wildly from one quarter to…

The Federal Trade Commission said this week that some people who bought certain home security cameras made by Ring, which is owned by Amazon, would be eligible for refunds for their purchase. The payments, totaling more than $5.6 million, are part of settlement between Ring and the F.T.C. over charges that the company failed to protect customer accounts.Here’s what to know.What is the lawsuit about?The F.T.C. sued Ring last May, charging the company with allowing employees and contractors to access customers’ private video footage. The agency said in its complaint that Ring used the videos to train computer algorithms without…

Mike Pinder, the last surviving founding member of the Moody Blues, whose innovative use of the Mellotron — a predecessor of the sampler — helped make the band a pioneer of progressive rock, died on Wednesday at his home in the Sacramento area. He was 82.His son Dan confirmed the death. He said that his father had breathing difficulties and had been in hospice care for a few days.The Moody Blues were formed in 1964, with a lineup of Mr. Pinder on keyboards, Denny Laine on guitar, Graeme Edge on drums, Ray Thomas on flute and Clint Warwick on bass.…

A wave of political turmoil crashed over Spain on Thursday as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez publicly weighed resigning his post after a judge agreed to investigate his wife over allegations that he and other officials decried as a politically driven smear campaign.The judge’s decision to take up the case — which was brought by a self-described anti-graft group on the basis of online news reports about alleged influence peddling — prompted Mr. Sánchez’s supporters to coalesce behind him and public prosecutors to move quickly on Thursday to try to get the case dismissed.Mr. Sánchez, whose political survival skills have for…

G/O Media announced on Thursday that it had sold The Onion, a satirical news site, to a group of digital media veterans.The Onion, which started in 1988 in Wisconsin as a weekly satirical newspaper and later became a website, is known for its parodies of current events. For the last decade, it has republished the same headline after nearly every mass shooting: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”In an email to G/O Media staff that was obtained by The New York Times, Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive, said the company was “undergoing an extensive…

An Australian court on Wednesday extended an injunction ordering the social media platform X to remove videos depicting the recent stabbing of a bishop, setting the country’s judicial system up for a clash with the company’s owner, Elon Musk, who has denounced the court’s order as censorship.Videos of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel during a church service on April 15 quickly started circulating on X, racking up hundreds of thousands of views. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, a regulator overseeing online safety, ordered X and other social media platforms to remove posts showing the video the next day.Other platforms complied,…

Federal regulators have discovered fragments of bird flu virus in roughly 20 percent of retail milk samples tested in a nationally representative study, the Food and Drug Administration said in an online update on Thursday.Samples from parts of the country that are known to have dairy herds infected with the virus were more likely to test positive, the agency said. Regulators said that there is no evidence that this milk poses a danger to consumers or that live virus is present in the milk on store shelves, an assessment public health experts have agreed with.But finding traces of the virus…

Eight crew members, including two who were ejected from a vehicle, were taken to hospitals after a crash on the set of the movie “The Pickup,” the authorities said on Thursday.The Georgia State Police said that the two people who were ejected sustained life-threatening injuries and that a third person had serious injuries. The crash occurred at a small airport outside Atlanta on Saturday.According to two people with direct knowledge of the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly about it, one person remained hospitalized with a back injury on Wednesday. They said that none of the actors in…

Army engineers on Thursday began construction of a floating pier and causeway for humanitarian aid off the coast of Gaza, which, when completed, could help relief workers deliver as many as two million meals a day for the enclave’s residents, Defense Department officials said. The construction on the “initial stages of the temporary pier and causeway at sea” means that the project’s timing is in line with what Pentagon officials had predicted, Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Defense Department’s press secretary, said. The construction is meant to allow humanitarian aid to bypass Israeli restrictions on land convoys into the…